peristaltor

I got a new toy. It's a gutter-cleaning Looj. The three-letter bar code prefix caught my eye. . . .


Wait -- How did they know?!?

The Wife and I got a kick out of this . . . because we're not paranoid.

The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism. So they have used scare tactics for years and years and years, to keep that from happening. If there were a broader program like our Medicare program, it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies. So that is their biggest concern.

That's a quote from Wendell Potter interviewed by Bill Moyer. Wendell worked as an executive at Cigna, a big health care insurance company. He was assigned to discredit Michael Moore's Sicko, a movie he said "hit the nail on the head." Why? "They (insurer executives) were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore." Wendell started to see problems in the way his company did business, and has decided to join the push towards national coverage by exposing the industry shenanigans.

Why?

One of the books I read as I was trying to make up my mind here was President Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage."

And in the forward, Robert Kennedy said that one of the president's, one of his favorite quotes was a Dante quote that, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, maintain a neutrality." And when I read that, I said, "Oh, jeez, I-- you know. I'm headed for that hottest place in hell, unless I say something." (Emphasis mine.)

Watch or read the entire interview. Then grab a pitchfork. Grab a torch. Listen for and join the nearest mob.

I hope it's time.

Ah, you can't get away from Microsoft's promotion of their new search engine Bing, can you? According to Patrick Cox of PRI's The World in Words podcast, Microsoft's Chief Exec hoped the name would "verb up," presumably to become a verb much as Google has over the years.

They might not have chosen wisely, though. Cox continued to note that Bing has many different meanings in Chinese (presumably Mandarin), but the meaning of "the fourth tone . . . means 'sickness.'

"It actually gets worse," Cox continues. "If you add another character to it, du -- so it would be bing du -- that means virus."

Nice one, Redmond. Is this another example of subtle truth in advertising like Wall Mart's Assterisk, or a complete oversight boner? Either way, it's Puerto Rico's Chevy Nova all over again: It doesn't go.

Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer (The guy from the Baloney Detection Kit video) lays down the skeptical, scientific approach in this Scientific American article:

The principle of positive evidence applies to all claims. Skeptics are from Missouri, the Show-Me state. Show me a Sasquatch body. Show me the archaeological artifacts from Atlantis. Show me a Ouija board that spells words with securely blindfolded participants. Show me a Nostradamus quatrain that predicted World War II or 9/11 before (not after) the fact (postdictions don’t count in science). Show me the evidence that alternative medicines work better than placebos. Show me an ET or take me to the Mothership. Show me the Intelligent Designer. Show me God. Show me, and I’ll believe.

According to the BBC, "Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture."

What would call such a joint venture? Why, Nigaz, of course.

I shit you not.

Michael Shermer gives the 12-point rundown on questions everyone should be asking all the time. BTW, his books Why People Believe Weird Things and Why Darwin Matters should be required high school reading.

It's a simple prayer, along the lines of "bountiful and loving God, please take (X) into your heavenly bosom. Tomorrow would be great."

Now, I'm not one to think prayer does anything much, really; but what if it works? What if that someone were to die tomorrow? There is legal precedent here. Back in the late '70s, a man was convicted of manslaughter when he told his friend to "Drop dead." Thing is, the friend had a heart condition; the verbal assaulter knew of the heart condition; and the court reasoned that the verbal abuse could have been judged sufficiently stressful to induce cardiac arrest. (Sorry, pre-web ancient story. No immediate linkage.)

So let's take that reasoning to the faithful.

To the faithful -- especially to leaders of the faithful's faith -- pray is real. Prayer gets results. Therefore, when one prays for the death of the President, that someone is using, under the terms of his or her faith, a weapon just as powerful as any gun or knife. Since threatening the life of the President is a crime worthy of a federal investigation, I say these people get visits from the appropriate authorities.

As many separate visits as known public imprecatory prayers.

John Hodgman grills the President on his nerd cred.

Tomorrow is the memorial for Nellis, the friend I mentioned earlier. On my trip to California last month, a friend of a friend liked my tee-shirt so much she up and got me another one, sensing I would be the perfect person to wear it. Big drinker that he was, I think Nellis would have loved it.

I'm not so sure, though, about how appropriate it would be to wear this shirt to the rememberance for a man who killed his liver and himself at age 44 with heavy drinking. ( Take a peak at what's written on the back, and let me know what you think. I promise to entertain all thoughts, since I'm really, really on the fence about this. )

Just learned of some Suckage. Nellis (aka C. from another post) died last month. I've been out of touch with the group, and only just learned of it 10 minutes ago.

Allow me to share his rememberance, and to quote a tidbit not everyone can boast:

Nellis was a mainstay of Seattle fringe theater and sketch comedy for many years. If you went to a show or after-party in the early 90’s, you saw, heard of, met and/or drank with Nellis. He created and wrote the wildly popular “Star Drek”; Leonard Nimoy attended a performance, and Nellis actively encouraged the rumor that Shatner had as well.

Because of its incredible run and Paramount's desire to revive the franchise, Star Drek was given the ol' Cease and Desist. A pity, but not nearly as sad as the passing of its creator.

Suckage.

Found a follow-up to something interesting I heard last year about how people cannot be told the truth if the truth disagrees with their preconceptions.

The same sort of issue — the persistence of misperceptions in the face of evidence — has also been intriguing Brendan Nyhan, of Duke University, North Carolina, and Jason Reifler, of Georgia State University. And they have published two fascinating papers providing the results of experiments that they conducted into whether it is possible to correct such errors of fact.

Their conclusions are not a cause for optimism.

I had heard about their study when I was writing my Deist Miasma series, but they were still working on questions I found too fundamental to include before the answers had been found. This new study found what I had suspected all along:

First, correcting a misperception doesn’t really work when the original misperception fits snugly with the subject’s ideology. Second, and worse still, attempting to correct errors often produces a backlash, with the error becoming more firmly believed. (Emphasis mine.)

Lesson: It really doesn't matter that you are right on the facts; people who don't like the facts simply won't listen.

A few months ago, I had to go to court to help sue some poor woman. She cut me off on the freeway. Her car paid the price of her misjudgment. My employer had to sue her, though, not because she was a bad person, not at all, but because her car insurance carrier was being a douchebag. It refused to pay up for the damage her sudden move caused.

Why didn't the employer just sue the insurer? Ah, here's the thing: the carrier has no standing in court. We had to sue the driver so the judge would rule and determine once and for all that she was at fault. This ruling forces her insurance carrier to pay for 100% of the damage instead of dicking around with offers of half compensation.

I felt sorry for her, being dragged into court for an accident that happened so long ago; but that's how the legal system works.

I've been thinking about this recently as more and more people note how Bush-like President Obama has been acting lately. ( Sorry, but I must be political for a bit. )

Lenny sent me this gem. He gravitates toward the redneck humor, even when it pokes fun at rednecks . . . like himself. From the email:

This was taken in front of the Gardendale, Al abama , Wal-Mart, where the young lady was shopping at the Flea market.

Look closely. . . .

A top made from a bottom!

. . . but have had no tech chops to execute. It's here!



I got the idea from a toy we had 20+ years ago in (IIRC) 1981. It was a simple wand with a keyboard. Enter the message, wave the wand, communicate over distance. I tried to hook it to my bike wheel, but refused to crack the case and destroy the toy (we weren't very affluent; wasting a cool toy was frowned upon by all). Had I done it, and found a way to trigger the next spurt of data other than the roller ball clicking on either side of the wave, that simple message maker would have been on the wheels.

Ah, well.

I have a problem. In the last hour, a friend dropped off a load of firewood. I got to chopping this cherry branch from a freshly-pruned tree. Before I chopped, though, I noticed a hole in the wood with hairs on the walls of the hole. Squirrel's nest, I thought.

I guestimated the depth of the hole and let fly with my chop saw. I got really lucky, chopping only the bottom 2 or 3 millimeters of the hole off. Surprise! No squirrel there, but a bunch of nested hair and an egg!

I took the hairs out a bit to see if there were more eggs and -- movement! It turns out the egg is the unhatched sibling to a little guy that is probably going to get pretty hungry pretty soon.

I think it would be cool to raise the little guy. Sadly, I suppose we could replace the branch, but it now has a massive hole in the nest, and my grubby hands inadvertently besmelled the hairs, so I need to find out what he eats to keep him alive.

Here's an egg shot for identification:


Bigger! Bigger!

I live in Seattle proper in the Pacific Northwest of the Continental United States, for those of you scrambling for the bird guides.

If you know a bird expert online, please link. The faster we can get him or her identified the greater his or her chances of growing older!

Much thanks in advance!


Addendum, Later that Day: I'll spare the bird haters of the LJ world and put the rest of this saga under a cut, with a single teaser:


Two of the Three

( Bird haters beware: The Kyoot Will Kill. )

Ten years ago, I unpacked a crate from California, did some modest assembly, and rolled the contents to the corner of the old Electric Vehicles NW parking lot to take this picture.


Fresh out of the crate.

That is a 1999 EMB Lectra, one of the first production electric motorcycles with features that I considered essential for both safety and personal reasons -- an alternating current propulsion system with regenerative braking, an onboard charging system, a clean and attractive appearance, and (most importantly) batteries that didn't spew acid on the rider in an accident. It also had to keep up with traffic, even on steep slopes.

I rode that bike for a couple thousand miles until poor design quirks and a lack of support (brought on by the manufacturer's assimilation into a heartless, evil company) finally killed my hope of getting it running again.

Though my lack of Mad Skillz with a soldering iron might have prevented me from fixing my bike, there are others with such skills. One such electrical engineer won the lottery, in that he knew my sister from work and heard about an available electric bike. He got my address from my sister and emailed me, asking how much I wanted. I replied:

I'm asking nothing ($0.00) for the bike, only that it go to a home where the goal is to get it running again (something I don't have the tech chops or inclination to try). I've poked around with soldering irons before, but never on something this unfamiliar to me. Also, sadly, my eyes just ain't what they used to be in cramped quarters.

Which led to this picture, taken yesterday after all the paperwork had been finished.


Goodbye, Old Pal

( And now, Ranty R. McRanterson must rant. )

Mary Roach giggles her way through her TED talk, noting upsuck, Kinsey's ejaculate measurements (and how they affected the carpet), and sow vibrators for pig farmers unwilling to mount the sow themselves.

6_bleen_7 turned me on to a great online game, Sneeze. You get one sneeze in each level and must infect a growing percentage of the population to continue.

Infect wisely!

Okay, folks, I'll be honest; I've been waiting for a device like Amazon's Kindle for quite some time. Small, portable, readable, and -- perhaps best of all -- connectable directly to the internet for content. It's cheaper than a laptop, uses less power (I assume), has a direct-light readable screen, and could solve one of the nagging problems faced by the newspaper industry today: It could lower the high cost of printing papers.

According to an episode of On The Media, however, ( the Kindle might be destined for the dustbin. )